That Friday afternoon was full of hype. The fact that two afternoon class meetings were suspended due to the professors being unavailable added much more to the hype. The students are preparing for the self-organized party come evening, where they are to show their musical talents–after all, they cannot let their physics studies interfere with their love for music. The research wing was therefore filled with sounds of instruments and students singing as one.
They were a batch of 40 or so students–what remains after three difficult years of physics courses. As a batch, they were pretty tight-knit–large groups of people tend to divide into smaller social groups, but this time the groups tend to unite into one single circle for whatever purpose they deemed worthwhile. The small party for the coming evening was yet another child of such union.
As the afternoon passed, these students continued filling the otherwise quiet research wing with lively music or happy chatter, except for one student. He was sitting before the table and reading manga with his laptop. Everything around him moved with joy, surrounded with their music, yet he never budged from where he sat. To the outsider, he seemed oblivious of his surroundings, absorbed to his own little marble that enclosed him and nobody else. But he knew he was awkwardly alone in this lively scene. The people around him did something productive to pass their time; he wasted his reading something rather unproductive to him, alone.
This was not the only time he was like this. If anything, he thinks it was always like this ever since. Sure, he made contact with his classmates every so often. Occasionally, he would join them in their happy moments. But more often than not he would be seen sitting in the corner of the room or walking home by himself. He was the person whose sudden disappearance nobody will notice, if ever he did disappear from their environment all of a sudden.
He started his undergraduate student life with around 90 other students. Three years, he remained standing with around 40 others. Yet he still has not made a close connection or bond with any of them. For three years, he remained a lone wolf, and he sees himself remaining so for the rest of his undergraduate years.
To him, the fact was inevitable and fitting. He had specific interests, pretty weird ones, which nobody in his batch shared. He was slowly losing his motivation and interest in the field he studies, which he attempted to reverse multiple times in the course of his studies, though futile. He was also doing worse and worse with his studies–probably an inevitable result of losing motivation and interest. He had no real hobbies, other than wasting his time surfing the internet, playing video games and reading random manga. And to top it all off, he usually preferred being alone.
It seemed to him as if he was the odd one out to begin with. And social dynamics work in such a way that the odd ones out are almost always excluded irrespective of the intention of the parties involved.
Was there anything to blame for this? Was he to blame for this? He thinks there is nothing to blame. He preferred to be alone–that was his nature. He got into an environment where nobody else shared his interests–that was the circumstance that was unforeseen too him. What happened was a twist of nature and circumstance, and he fell victim to it. And not much can be done, or so he thinks. He could not see the future, so the circumstances were unknown to him. He could not easily change his nature–after all, a rooted tree is very difficult, if not impossible, to completely remove from ground, unless the tree is killed, and its roots dug after losing what little moisture was left when it died.
He was aware of all this–and he wrote about it.
The fact that he wrote about it lets us have a peek through his inner thoughts. “What was he thinking, and why did he write about him being a lone wolf?” is the question that we will ask, among others. We can make some guesses to this question. He knew more about himself and recognized himself more, that for sure is certain. Maybe the exclusion has also gotten into him, and is now feeling a bit lonely. He wanted to be heard; he wanted someone to understand him. But we can only go so far as to speculate, for we are not him, and we do not have or own his mind.
As he finished typing his thoughts on his laptop, his classmates have already started their little party. He decided to stick with the group, though not making much contact, while typing his own little story. The reason was that he just felt like it, and he wants to leave it at that.
Lunaculi -Moonlit Eyes- 